Yes, I understand. I find this (moral) area really interesting.

For example, although I've been on one cruise holiday I will refuse to go on another now I understand how polluting and generally bad they are to the environment (earth.org/the-environmental-im…). I've made a personal moral choice, there are other types of holiday available.

Likewise, when I first found out about the cambridge analytical scandal (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook…) I considered it simply unacceptable behavour so I, and many others, left facebook at that point. Further research later and I don't regret that decision ... meta remains a bad company.

I have found, though, their are usually alternatives to be had. For example, I own an electric car and sometimes want to chat online about them with others. There are facebook groups, of course, but also non-facebook forums such as speakev.com/. I mentioned in the talk some exceptions to this - some of the summer festivals I attend only use facebook groups, so I have to use fetchrss.com/ to convert these groups to RSS so I can still read them without a facebook account. Of course I try to pursuade the organisers to consider other platforms as well!

I expect its possible to use facebook and avoid most of the tracking (for example use a well configured & tested browser config, ditch the app, use tracker/ad blockers, use browser plugins like "facebook container"), but even then there are still issues.

Since you mention it, I left linkedin recently after it introduced using users data to train its generative AI (not that I was using the site that much).

I've never really thought of myself as overly "moral", yet I find myself making some choices like this ! Life is surprising. Sometimes you need to vote with your feet.

Having said all that, I'm still using some "E-rated" online services - for example google drive & docs. I hope to find an alternative to that this year.

But, yes, your point is well made ... not much point in having a social platform if you are the only one on it ! Still, I do feel we should try this out ... even outside of the u3a its working pretty well for me personally, I'm finding most things I need here, although it does require some effort.